The Secret Listeners

by Sinclair McKay

  As preparations continued, recalled Hugh Skillen, ‘Bletchley Park sent out rapid information on how to decode certain Army and German Air Force codes.’ Even though the Heliopolis school had contained within itself a sort of miniature Bletchley Park, with Major Jacob’s recruits working on certain ciphers, the bulk of work on the ever-changing codes was being done at Bletchley. According to Skillen, even as this supremely confidential information was being carefully parcelled out to certain chosen military units, the British were still taking extreme care not to bandy it around with their American friends; a little later, General Patton himself could not be entirely sure of the provenance of the codebreaking triumphs. Although dissatisfied with the performance of many other military units, Patton was, apparently, thrilled with the Y Service. On one occasion during the push through the desert, after a successful skirmish following the receipt of a decrypted enemy signal, Patton apparently exclaimed: ‘I want to give two medals: one to the G.I. who took that message – and one to the British soldier who decoded it.’

  Patton was not to know that both interception and decryption involved the expertise of a wider range of people than this. Nonetheless, the citation was requested. A few months later, it is rumoured that Patton owed his success at El Guettar in Tunisia in 1943 – when the Americans managed for the first time to overcome German tank units – entirely to a single decrypt involving Axis attack plans and timing.

  But before all this, and set against such instances of harmony and praise, was the discordant noise of internecine sniping on the British side via means of memos and letters. Lieutenant-Colonel Sayer, writing to London in 1942, once again took the opportunity to review the shortcomings and deficiencies of 5 IS: ‘This institution has cost me more fret and worry than anything else in “Y” put together . . .’ he wrote, ‘from the 5 I.S. correspondence you saw what intolerable behaviour I had put up with in the interests of smooth working.’ The source of this behaviour was Major Wallace, who had himself been firing off incendiary memos concerning unsatisfactory colleagues and maddening working practices. ‘[Major] Jacob refused to consider giving up Wallace,’ wrote Sayer. ‘Then the latter took a piece of particularly high-handed action which left no alternative but that he should go, or I would have to.’ He never stipulated quite what this action was, but added that the ‘whole air of intrigue and mystery is to me nauseating’.

  Reshuffles were made within the Y Service, and both Jacob and Wallace were moved to other sections. Sayer wrote:

  Now that Wallace has gone, there is a marked improvement in the atmosphere at Helio[polis]. Wallace was an odd fish, extremely pleasant socially; but he did a great deal of harm. The atmosphere at Helio was most unpleasant, and he fostered in the 5 I.S. personnel a feeling of spite against all the rest of ‘Y’, with myself as Public Enemy number 1. The officers in the field loathe the very name of 5 I.S., which is a good pointer as to how things were.

  Indeed, in his view the impact of the work of 5 I.S. was almost negligible at times: ‘After the East African campaign, 5 I.S. subsided into a state of lethargy. They did little or nothing to prepare for the German problem, about which they were defeatist.’ Sayer added that it had actually been a plucky ‘amateur in the western desert’ who had broken one particular German communications link that was now a valuable source, ‘after material had been coming back and lying untouched in Helio for a month’. He went on to state that the group appeared to know nothing and care less about wireless transmission intelligence. ‘Things like this, I think, made Wallace feel that he was behind the times and had no grasp of the situation, which was perfectly true. And being a jealous man he disliked us because we were organising the expansion and improvement which he had failed to do. Added to all this,’ Sayer concluded magnificently, ‘Wallace was not a normal character.’

  There is something appealing about the fact that such a letter – filled with the minutiae of inter-office rivalry – could be written amidst the intensity of the desert conflict. Sayer referred obliquely to the savage realities of those battles – and the casualties – as he recalled arriving at Ma’aten Bagush, a base on the Egyptian coast several hundred miles west of Alexandria, some months previously, facing the Germans square on. ‘Rommel walked around 10 Corps,’ he wrote (10 Corps being a formation attached to the Eighth Army). ‘Some got away and some didn’t. Most of the B section didn’t. It was a sad loss, because half the operators were old hands from Sarafand, first class at Italian and German. A fine old vintage which takes years to mature.’

  Y Service operator Corporal Harold Everett, who had been working in Cairo, had vivid memories of that time spent in the desert:

  I was already desert worthy, in that my digestive system and bowels had more or less adapted themselves to a perpetual admixture of sand with their normal intake. Daily life was like life with any Army unit in the Western Desert. Great heat by day and intense cold at night, sand in everything, millions of flies that materialised from nowhere, a perpetual shortage of water, and the occasional attack of ‘the trots’.

  These, naturally, were not the full extent of the trials that Corporal Everett wrily recalled. There was also ‘the horror of a young lieutenant, fresh from Cairo, at finding that our only latrine was the desert itself (“I shall only go after dark”), the sight of three officers, in the middle of nowhere, solemnly sitting apart from the men, being waited on by a batman at a table made of a plank of wood resting on empty petrol cans; our abortive attempts to train a chameleon to catch flies in the “I” van . . .’6

  Even at the relative stability of the Kafr-El-Farouk RAF listening base outside Cairo, established in 1942, desert life brought on other trials for the wireless interceptors. ‘Several cases of dysentery occurred, indicating necessity for improved sanitation,’ ran one internal RAF memo about the base, dating from April 1942. ‘Adjutant approached Works Directorate, stressing urgency of completion of ablution blocks and latrines.’

  As the weeks wore on and the conflict intensified, so conditions deteriorated in this interception base established on sand. As much as the troops on the front line faced harrowing conditions, it was also difficult for those in necessarily sedentary work to maintain wellbeing. One memo ran:

  [There] has been the unfortunate epidemic of streptococcal sore throats. This in turn has raised the problem of accommodation and hygiene as the medical officer considers that the spread of the epidemic is largely attributable to the general lack of physical stamina, which has been undermined by the inability of personnel engaged on night duties to get proper sleep in the daytime under tentage from which flies cannot be excluded.

  The knock-on effects were serious; the intelligence being provided was vital and any decrease in man (or woman) power would take its toll on the quality of the work. Nor were these any old sore throats: a few cases developed into scarlet fever, others into diphtheria. There was also the threat of quinsy, a complaint little heard of nowadays involving abscesses in the throat that can lead to a blockage of airways. This, combined with the unaccustomed dry, dusty air of the desert, must have been torment.

  ‘Gargling prior to going on watch was ordered . . . and has been maintained since,’ declared a Kafr-El-Farouk RAF memorandum from October 1942. ‘All personnel were inspected by the medical officer before going on duty. Several throats were caught in the early infection stage . . . the NAAFI was closed, all lectures, concerts and dances were banned.’

  Given the otherwise sparse opportunities for entertainment, it is as well that this plague soon began to abate. Even more drastic measures were considered by the authorities but quietly dismissed. ‘Surgical masks for personnel were suggested but not used because 1) they would have to be worn for six hours at a stretch; 2) they would interfere with smoking which is the only relaxation possible in a Wireless Transmission room where constant watch is maintained . . .’

  What is interesting through all these archival memos and carefully kept records is that among the military personnel were not merely civil
ian experts (some in uniform, as noted) but also a number of women recruits, who were coping admirably with the unpredictable pressures and strains of being right at the edge of the combat zone. And at Kafr-El-Farouk, the sickness rate rose and fell insidiously. ‘Heretofore sickness incidence among airmen has remained steady at 2% . . . The breakdown has now occurred and it has risen sharply to 4%’, noted one internal memo. As for the WAAF operatives, they suffered ‘lack of sleep, irregular eating and irregular habits. As a result of this, the morale of the WAAF officers was low, their percentage of sickness incidence was more than 50% greater than that of the airmen.’ And the answer? ‘Working hours to be made more regular by adopting definite day and night duty, alternating from one to the other,’ was one suggestion. This helped, as did more regular leave.

  In the earliest days of this station, the influx of civilian recruits, with their minimum of military training, caused some raising of eyebrows on the part of the squadron leader, who duly recorded in the official journal:

  Although the number of personnel despatched to this station was satisfactory, an initial test revealed that a large percentage of these tradesmen were very far from the standard to be expected from their classification.

  Only 6% of the wireless operators tested at 20 words per minute were able to complete the test satisfactorily. Many of the test papers had so many errors that it was impossible to mark them, and up to 70 errors in 40 groups was not unusual. From questions put to the airmen it would appear that the majority have been misemployed for considerable periods and no arrangements made to allow them to keep in practice with simple buzzer and key arrangements during this period . . .

  With hindsight, it is possible to see that the operatives concerned were simply a little rusty. As the weeks progressed and the work intensified, such complaints were to thin out considerably.

  One other intriguing aspect of life in such a desert base was how the men and women commingled, if at all. The authorities had seen to it at first that, especially in their leisure time, there was a strict separation between the genders almost like that of medieval monks and nuns. But was this wise? ‘There was some question raised by higher authority of the desirability of the partition of the present combined WAAF and RAF officers mess,’ wrote one squadron leader. ‘Although there was much to be said in favour of such division, there were difficulties in connection with the structural alterations of the mess . . .’ But there were difficulties of an emotional nature too. ‘Also it was felt that the RAF officers stood in some degree in loco parentis to the WAAF officers.’

  Fortunes in those sandy wastes were turning decisively; and codebreaker Henry Dryden later gave a concise account of one of the crucial military engagements of the war, and of the vital role played by the Y Service:

  Before the El Alamein battle started, I was in quick succession promoted to the rank of Major, transferred to 5 IS . . . and shortly afterwards appointed Commanding Officer of the unit. The first major decision I had to take concerned the deployment of 5 IS personnel. Until then, my predecessor had maintained the principle of retaining all cryptanalysts at Heliopolis, with only occasional exceptions, such as the 7th Armoured Division Unit. Now, with a campaign designed to end the war in Africa imminent, and the need for an all-out Y effort pre-eminent, it seemed essential to jettison the principle. Accordingly, I sent nearly all the younger members of both the German and the Italian sections up to 8th Army, for further deployment as required.7

  In August 1942, the secret listeners in Egypt had perhaps their finest hour. Feeling himself to be firmly in command of the Western Desert, Rommel decided to launch the attack that was supposed to lead to the German conquest of Cairo. However, he was completely unaware that the British knew – down to the finest detail – exactly what he had planned. The intercept stations and the codebreakers had noted and unravelled not merely German Enigma messages but also messages on the Italian system; in essence the British had almost a full itinerary of the ships and cargoes that were to bring in the vital supplies for Rommel’s forces.

  And even as Rommel was preparing, the pre-emptive fightback was beginning; the very ships carrying the supplies were being sunk by the British on the back of such intelligence. Within two days, Rommel’s supplies of fuel were being strangled and at last, the Germans were forced to pull back from the Al Haifa ridge near El Alamein. When at last the Battle of El Alamein began, there could be no question of the courage of the troops and the pilots fighting; nor of the effectiveness of General Montgomery’s military tactics. The fact remains, though, that this was also a terrific triumph for signals intelligence.

  According to many, it was Rommel’s attack on 28 October that proved the decisive moment in the battle; after days of increasingly heavy losses among Axis troops and tanks around the El Alamein line, and with supplies increasingly precarious, Rommel’s forces launched another assault on the Allied positions. But thanks to Bletchley, Montgomery knew how desperate Rommel’s situation was: he was given a Panzer decrypt which read that the situation was ‘grave in the extreme’. Indeed, German and Italian troops were exhausted. Montgomery feinted that he was planning to move his forces north; and thanks to Y Service intercepts, he knew almost at once that his ruse had worked. Several days later, the 21st Panzer Division received orders over the radio waves to attack. So too did the British field Y Station, which was in a position to relay those orders instantly; Rommel’s tank gambit was – after an intense clash – thwarted. With this, the remainder of his Panzer divisions were ordered to pull out, forced into full retreat.

  Despite the triumph, the repercussions of the conflict could be felt throughout Cairo. In November 1942, the Countess of Ranfurly wrote:

  Surely this must be the beginning of the end of the war in north Africa . . . So the days begin – on peaks of optimism. But as the hours wear on and I visit the Cairo hospitals, I sink back into chasms of gloom. The price of this news is so terrible . . . you see it in the long wards where the burn cases lie so still – sometimes even their eyes are bandaged; it glares at you from screened off beds where people are dying. You put on your gayest frock, paint your face, collect sweets and magazines and determine to be cheerful. Then at the hospital, the smell of rotting flesh meets you in the long dark corridors and you begin thinking again . . .8

  Operation Torch, launched on 8 November 1942, was ‘the largest amphibious invasion force thus far in the history of warfare:

  300 warships, 370 merchant ships, 107,000 men’, all landing on the beaches of French North Africa: Algiers, Oran and Casablanca. And to enable this mighty Allied push, the American commanders were relying upon decrypts of Luftwaffe Enigma messages, supplied to them by the Y Service and by Bletchley Park. Within weeks, the British Eighth Army was pushing the Afrika Korps ever further back; in the German efforts to hang on to Tunisia, Luftwaffe air power was diverted all the way from Russia. This in turn had the consequence of weakening the Germans on the eastern front. Meanwhile, in London, all significant German Enigma messages, having been decrypted, were read by Churchill himself; which is how he could inject so much confidence into his assertion that this turn in the course of the war marked, at the least, ‘the end of the beginning’.

  Churchill’s sense of relief at the news from the Middle East was shared throughout the country. Back at Beaumanor, resident magazine poet Ollie Pearce felt moved to contribute an illustrated ode to the efforts of the Eighth Army:

  Reversals too they suffered but their spirit still remained

  For every inch of ground they lost a dozen more were gained

  Against a highly organised, well-trained and ruthless foe

  This novice army battled and returned each stinging blow . . .

  On to Tunisia they went and with their comrades won

  The victory of Africa which saved it from the Hun.

  The failures of Norway, of France and Greece are past

  The Army’s prestige is restored, Dunkirk avenged at last.

  In the wet a
nd the rain of the Leicestershire countryside, life off duty at Beaumanor had settled into almost hyperreal normality. As the recorder of the table tennis club noted of his society’s success: ‘We have now passed successfully through the initial stages of awkward adolescence, and the club is going ahead well . . . At the Club, besides Table Tennis, we have the use of a billiards table and darts board; space is somewhat limited but we have managed, so far, to get by.’ Elsewhere, the local football league was also continuing apace: ‘Dickenson had the misfortune to break a collar bone in the match against Brush Apprentices,’ noted A.H. Appleton, the Hon Sec of the Football Society. ‘This was the result of an awkward fall.’

  So what of the experimental wireless operators who, listening and transcribing in their stuffy Leicestershire huts, began to wonder what their wars would seem like in comparison to that of the Eighth Army? How might those back on home ground, following – headphones firmly clamped over their ears – the exploits of Montgomery’s troops, see their own role? There is no suggestion that their contributions were somehow of a lesser kind; but it is interesting nonetheless to glimpse what the Beaumanor listening crew thought of themselves. Through another wry little poem, this one from a man calling himself simply ‘Nosweh’, we begin to hear a sort of answer.

  Here he is writing as though his future self is looking back at his wartime experiences:

  Our work was arduous, none could know

  our untold misery and woe . . .

  We toiled while watching daylight fade

  And even as the dawn came creeping